Can you name one untapped business opportunity in Rwanda that investors can take advantage of?
This was the question How we made it in Africa posed to a panel of business leaders at the Afreximbank annual general meeting, held in the Rwandan capital Kigali last week.
Jean de Dieu Kagabo, managing director of Rwanda-based packaging company Soft Packaging, responded by identifying a simple but widely-used product: matches.
He said virtually every household – whether they are lower or upper class – use matches. Yet, the product is still imported instead of manufactured locally. “It is very easy to produce, but no-one has thought about doing it – it is a big opportunity.”
Kagabo added there is also potential to export matches to Rwanda’s neighbouring countries.